Murderous

by David Hickson

  Robyn drew on the cigarette again. I had not missed the change of tone. She was no longer talking about the ten-year-old survivor of a brutal farm killing.

  “There was nothing innocent about the man who did that to you,” I said. “Nothing innocent, kind, or normal.”

  Robyn turned to me and her face reflected the glowing end of her cigarette as she drew another breath.

  “He wants forgiveness,” she said, and threw her cigarette down the ramp to the sea where it gave a desperate hiss and expired. “He wants to be forgiven for having survived. That’s what nobody understands. Everyone feels sorry for the survivors, they say all the comforting things, but they just don’t get it. All he wants is to be forgiven.”

  “Is that what you want from me?” I asked.

  Robyn turned her dark eyes onto me. “No, Ben, I don’t want your forgiveness.”

  We sat in silence for a minute.

  “I doubt he is that little boy,” she said after the silence. “He doesn’t seem all that damaged to me.”

  “And you would know,” I said. “It takes one to know one.”

  Robyn’s eyes held their gaze. You don’t say something like that to the survivor of a trauma like hers. But she allowed me to get away with it. I was making progress.

  Nineteen

  Chandler dropped thirty seconds ahead of me. That was the minimum separation we dared go for. We didn’t want to get tangled up in each other’s chutes on the way down, and we weren’t going to be able to see each other. We’d not be collapsing our sliders, so the flapping would be audible, but we weren’t strapping on the glow tubes to provide the ground staff of Riaan “BB” Breytenbach’s game farm with a neon light show. BB’s ground staff were a part of the private army that he deployed to his gold mines and they were encouraged to overcome the temptation to squeeze the triggers of their Vektor R5 sub-machine guns on the mines by squeezing them here on the training ground of the Breytenbach farm. Neon-coloured, glowing tubes strapped to people dropping from the sky would be just the kind of target their instructors would approve of.

  The other reason for the thirty-second gap was that it had been some years since I had last stepped through the open door of an aeroplane at sixteen thousand feet. Chandler had insisted on fastidiously triple checking every detail of my rig with me the day before to make sure time had not eroded my training, and he hadn’t seemed entirely convinced after I’d forgotten the names of some important cords. I’d told him it was a joke, and he’d flattened his mouth to show me how funny he thought my joke was. But the gap was thirty seconds.

  The air struck me like an old friend playing rough and took my breath away as it always had. I was that misguided teenager again, doing everything because it was an escape. Seizing every challenge because it offered a way out of an unsatisfactory life. On every one of the hundreds of jumps I’d done since the first one at the training centre in Hertfordshire, I’d relived those first few seconds. The instinctive panic as I leapt into the void, the loss of breath, the momentary disorientation. The sense that this was finally the end, that this would be the last one. Before the icy air found its way back into my lungs, the moment of suspension – the ‘sharpening’ our Israeli instructor had called it. That point at which sense returns and brings with it, for those who have the ‘problem with thoughts of the bigger things in life and death’, a realisation that it is not all over after all. The instructor’s eyes always found me at this point of the briefing, perhaps because I’d never laughed at what my peers assumed was a dry joke of his. I’d thought of the stories I had heard of his family who were killed in the suicide bombing in the Mahane Yehuda Market of Jerusalem. His wife and two daughters who had been shopping to prepare for his return from a training camp. But then he looked away from me and reminded us that even for those who do not ‘have a problem with such thoughts’, the sharpening was the point at which you gained control of your fall, turned your body, regained your bearings.

  I held the glowing altimeter close and confirmed that I was only now passing fifteen thousand feet. I started my count out loud to keep my focus. I needed the sixty seconds of free fall to position myself correctly, then I’d pull the chute at the last moment to avoid spending too long with my canopy visible from the main buildings. We were dropping into a lower section of the bush below a ridge, but there would be a minute or two in which someone with good sight or a pair of binoculars might make out the shape of our translucent canopies as the sky brightened.

  The sun had not climbed above the horizon yet, but the eastern sky was blushing and already I could distinguish the darker patches of trees beneath me. To drop into an unlit zone in pitch dark would have been suicidal, and looking down now I wondered whether Chandler had misjudged it. It didn’t look as if there was enough light yet. Strapped beside the altimeter was my GPS watch. The five pinpricks that were the solar-powered beacons we had installed around the flattest patch of bush we had found were off to the side, showing I was overshooting. I needed to account for the wind: I didn’t want it behind me, pushing me beyond the zone and into the thorn trees. I pressed down with my right arm onto the blast of air I was riding and pressed my legs down. The five pinpricks started to turn slowly.

  Another glance at the altimeter told me I was passing ten thousand feet, dropping at a hundred and seventy feet a second. I had forty seconds to go, and as many more as I dared to squeeze. My chute would take three seconds to open, and if that failed, I needed another three for my emergency. The five pinpricks were drifting off to the right side now and were ahead of me. I caught a momentary flutter ahead, which was probably Chandler’s canopy collapsing to the ground as he let it fall. That was always the vulnerable moment, but he would be below the ridge and if anyone had seen anything they would search in vain. Until my canopy filled and floated through their telescopic sights, which had seemed to me an argument for me to go first. But Chandler had insisted and mumbled about the broken ankle he had sustained when we dropped with Brian into the Kivu region where the dead tourists were waiting with their booby-trapped mines. I closed my eyes for two seconds, but the thought didn’t clear. It was the kind of thing the psychologists had explained to me when they had said, “No, Corporal Gabriel, you cannot return to full service until we can be certain you are fit to do so. Those memories, Corporal Gabriel, those images you describe of your friend’s blood and fragments of bone on the face of your captain. Those are the reasons you cannot return to service.”

  My count passed fifty, and I was below six thousand. ‘The home straight’ was the Israeli captain’s term. ‘Your moment is coming, don’t disappoint her by being premature’ and the scattered laughter. But he never smiled, that Israeli captain. I watched the altimeter drop and tried to match the GPS pinpricks with the patches of darkness below me. Somewhere down there was the zone we had chosen. Flat enough to walk across, not too many big boulders, a few trees around the edges, nothing high enough to snag the chute. If I’d planned it right, the wind would carry me beyond the open stretch when I opened the canopy, and I’d do a low turn back into the wind for the approach, but I still could not see the zone. A voice called sixty-five. It was mine, and my altimeter was dropping toward three thousand. If I did nothing, I would strike the ground of BB’s game farm in less than twenty seconds. I had the pull cord in my hand, and gave it an extra beat, then one more, and I pulled. The rush of wind fluttered and modulated, and I fell another five hundred feet in the three seconds that it took the canopy to unfurl. I felt the jerk of the harness and the sudden silence as the invisible cushion of air snatched me up. Just over a thousand feet to go. Chandler would be proud, I thought, and then I saw him rolling up his canopy. I was dead above the zone, and the wind was pushing me over it as I had hoped.

  “You pulled late,” said Chandler as I coasted in beside him. His grey eyes flashed with anger. “What were you doing up there, for god’s sake? Daydreaming?”

  “You’re jealous,” I said. “Bet your timing wasn’t so good.” />
  “There’s no time for your jokes, corporal. Pack your chute and let’s get going.”

  “Yes, colonel,” I said, but I could see in the hard lines of his face that something had frightened him. Perhaps I was not the only one who had suffered from visions of the aftermath of my previous jump.

  The armoured vehicle was in good condition. Under the tarpaulin in the back were the one hundred and twenty glistening bars we’d left there a few weeks before. We stared at them for a full two minutes without saying anything, and then Chandler sighed and replaced the tarpaulin. We got the camouflage netting off by the time the sun poked its first rays over the horizon. The matte black paint was stained and muddy, but the water from one of the Jerry cans was all we needed to clean the dust and grime off. The little solar powered battery charger had kept the spare battery at full charge, and Chandler had me pump the tyres up and put them back on while he fretted over the radio and listened in to see if anyone was coming over the ridge to see what had happened to the two parachutists. No one was coming, and so Chandler allowed me a cigarette after I’d collected Fat-Boy’s little beacons and changed into my black uniform. Then I put on a pair of mechanic’s overalls and slid under the vehicle on my back to open the fuse box. Fat-Boy had been correct about the placement of the electric fuel pump, and I confirmed the rating of the fuse. Chandler double-checked because he wasn’t leaving anything to chance and then he primed the engine and turned it a few times to lubricate it and spread the extra oil. The old battery died on the third attempt, but the spare got the engine running, and it was before oh seven hundred hours when we rolled out of the shallow ravine and clambered with all four wheels onto the flat stretch of our drop zone. From there we meandered between the rocks and trees and found our way eventually to the dusty track that would lead us back to the heart of the Breytenbach compound.

  “We’ll aim for the oh eight hundred patrol,” said Chandler, and I gave him a few yessirs in agreement.

  We had abandoned the jeep in the ravine to avoid the inevitable roadblocks Breytenbach would have ordered. We slipped through the net by returning on foot to the lodge through the wild bush, where we lay low for several days. The journey had been hell, almost two days with Fat-Boy griping all the way, following the meandering animal paths, carrying Robyn on an improvised stretcher, and taking frequent breaks to tend to her wound. Now we were back in the bush again, reunited with the gold, and the only way to get the vehicle and its load out of here was back through the Breytenbach complex.

  The beady eye of a camera watched us approach the gate between the game area and the complex. The gate opened automatically, and a few minutes later we rolled up the dusty road towards the front entrance of the complex. We drew no attention because we were approaching from inside the gates. Chandler chose a stubby thorn tree about fifty metres short of the gates to pull up beside. He popped the hood, and I climbed out to peer into the engine as if I knew what was going on. It was odd to be back here, and witness again the disturbing silence of the place. It was teeming with armed guards on their training camp, but they marched in disciplined blocks of six with the determined silence of automatons. Our vehicle attracted sidelong glances, but not one of them dared to break the rhythm of their pace to enquire into our right to be there.

  “What did I tell you?” said Chandler smugly when I tired of looking into the engine and went to stand at the door as if I was reporting my findings. “When you’re inside the fence no one gives a damn.”

  “Eventually someone will give a damn,” I said.

  “Not long now,” said Chandler, and he consulted his wristwatch. “The perimeter patrol will be back any minute.”

  He was correct. Within ten minutes another growling black vehicle appeared on the other side of the entrance gates and they rolled open. The vehicle crept through like an angry dog looking for a fight. The engine was cut, two doors slammed, and I left our vehicle and walked towards the security building at the entrance where the two guards would fill in the details of their vehicle and file their report.

  The silence of the morning was oppressive. I felt the sweat running down my back as the heavy black uniform and extra layer of overalls took their toll. I walked around the back of the newly parked vehicle and tripped as I passed the driver’s door. I looked down, then stooped as if I’d noticed that I had a loose shoelace. Under cover of the vehicle, I dropped onto my back and slid under the engine just behind the knobbly front tyre. I found the fuse box and unlatched it but wasn’t prepared for the heat of the engine, which singed my fingers as I touched the latch. I dropped the spare fuse I was holding and bit my tongue to block the cry of pain. Over the heavy smell of hot oil, came the smell of my burnt flesh. I found the fuel injection fuse and pulled it out. I scrabbled around for the dropped fuse with my good hand and found it just as I heard the door to the security room slam closed. I pushed the fuse in roughly and snapped the cover back in place. My legs were sticking out from under the vehicle, I could hear the crunching of the boots on the gravel and felt the panic rise in my chest.

  Then I heard Chandler’s voice calling and the two pairs of boots stopped and swivelled in the dust. I twisted and slid out, then stood up to face the two guards, but they had their backs to me and were watching Chandler approach with his hand held up in greeting, and the expression on his face I knew he thought was a friendly one. I went up to the reflective doors of the security room and pushed on them. There was a buzzing noise followed by a click and I stepped inside.

  The security room had undergone an upgrade since my previous visit. They had added additional screens to the wall of high-resolution images from cameras positioned all about the complex. Before them on chrome seats with wheels and levers that allowed their occupants to lean back and not worry about falling over, were four of the permanent staff, gazing up at the screens and nursing cups of coffee as if they were waiting for the main show to start. I realised that Chandler and I needn’t have worried about our descent being observed. Screens are all very well but get too many of them together and stare at them for too long, particularly at night, and I guessed we could have come down with the glow tubes without being spotted. In any case, the cameras were focused on the complex. What happened out on the game farm was not something they were interested in. The man who opened the door regarded me with irritation. My overalls were greasy and dusty from my stint under the vehicle.

  “That the patrol vehicle giving the trouble?” I asked the man.

  “Don’t know nothing about no trouble,” he replied.

  “They’ve had trouble starting it,” I said.

  The man shook his head. He’d run out of ‘no’s’.

  “I’ll take a look at it,” I said. “The boss probably got it wrong. When is it scheduled to go out again?”

  The man drew a large breath and released it all in one go. He reached for the roster and moved a large finger down the list.

  “Ten,” he said, and lifted his coffee cup to his mouth to demonstrate that our conversation was ended.

  The vehicle had not moved when I emerged into the morning sun, but the driver was doing his best. The engine started with a roar, but then settled to an idle, and stalled as soon as he tried to accelerate. I ignored them and wandered back to our vehicle, where Chandler was standing at the open engine and broadcasting irritation through his back. As I approached him, the driver of the vehicle that was having the trouble called out to me.

  “You a grease monkey?” he asked.

  I didn’t deny it.

  “What’s the fucking problem then?” he demanded. “Keeps stalling.”

  “Sounds like the fuel injection’s blocked,” I said knowledgably. “Roll it down the hill to the workshop, we’ll take a look. You going back out soon?”

  “Two hours,” said the man.

  “I’ll get them to change the schedule and take you off it. Take the morning off. We’ll have it ready end of the day.”

  The man cursed, but let in the clutch, and allow
ed the vehicle to roll.

  “Start the engine,” I suggested, “but just let it idle. You’ll get the brakes and steering that way. Don’t accelerate or it will cut out.”

  He gave a snarl, but started the engine and coasted down the dusty track.

  The workshop was at the lower edge of the complex, where there wasn’t a view, and where the oil spills and revving engines wouldn’t spoil the vacations of BB’s guests. The chief mechanic had the crippled vehicle up on the lift and he was opening up the fuse box when Chandler and I drove up. I had stripped the overalls off and was wearing the black uniform of the guards. I climbed out with a friendly wave.

  “Water,” I said, “been running hot all morning.”

  “Why is that my problem?” he asked.

  “You got any? I can put it in myself.”

  The mechanic threw the screwdriver he’d used to open the fuse box into a toolbox where it made a satisfyingly loud noise, then he wiped his hands on a rag and moved his head like he suffered from a nervous disorder, but which I interpreted as meaning I should follow him. The water can was around the back, and by the time we returned with a full can Chandler was already back in the passenger seat looking like an aristocrat planning to fire the hired help. The vehicle up on the lift was missing its licence plates, but the mechanic didn’t notice that.

  At two minutes past oh ten hundred hours we rolled up to the security gates, and our licence plates were scrutinised by the camera placed at knee level for that purpose. A guard gazed at us blankly through the bulletproof glass and checked the number against his roster. A loudspeaker crackled.

  “You’re late,” said the guard.

  “Two minutes,” I agreed. “Had engine trouble.”

  The guard gazed at me for a moment and one could have imagined there was a thought process happening, but then the boom lifted and the gates swung open. I didn’t accelerate too hard but kept us going at a reluctant thirty kilometres an hour. The gates swung closed behind us.